Oregon Football: Is Chip Kelly Really on the Hot Seat?

Yesterday Dennis Dodd of cbssports.com took the time to put together this list of every college football coach and rate how hot their seat is both from last year and currently this year. While the list was interesting, you slowly make your way down to coach Chip Kelly.

By the ranking system that Dodd used, Chip Kelly registered in at a 0 in 2011, which meant "he can't be touched." Seems like a far assessment considering at that time Kelly had led the Ducks to two-straight conference titles, a perfect season and an appearance in the Rose Bowl and National Championship game.

The strange part about the rankings for Chip Kelly is when you look to the left, you see Kelly's rating for 2012, a three. By Dodd's rankings, a three means "on the bubble, feeling pressure."

So the natural question you have to ask yourself is how bad did the Ducks do in 2011 to warrant the three-point swing. Last year the Ducks went on to win their third-straight conference title and the Rose Bowl. So that kind of success should cause a coach to worry about job security?

To make things worse, when you take a deeper look into the other coaches that are in the same classification as Kelly, it becomes more obvious that Dodd has lost touch. Other coaches in the 3.0-3.5 category include: Rich Ellerson (Army), Jeff Tedford (Cal), Dabo Swinney (Clemson), Jon Embree (Colorado), David Cutcliffe (Duke), Kevin Wilson (Indiana), Joker Phillips (Kentucky), Jerry Kill (Minnesota) and more.

Even if you were to ignore the rest of the nation and look at Kelly and the Pac-12, it gets worse.

Among the Pac-12 coaches, Jeff Tedford had the worst rating and Kelly was tied for the second-worst rating in the conference. Let me repeat that. A coach who has won three-straight conference titles is tied for the second-worst job security rating.

So far, Kelly has put together one of the most impressive three-year resumes of any head coach period. With the amount of success that he has led this program to, the Ducks know they have a coach that is helping them become one of the nation's elite.

While with the Ducks, the only knock against Kelly could be that he was tempted by the NFL. This past offseason saw Kelly come close to signing on with Tampa Bay but the opportunity showed him that he loved being the Ducks coach even more.

The Ducks program and its fans know that Kelly is the man for the job. Kelly is a coach that is innovative and has helped turn them into a national title contender.

With the 2012 season right around the corner, Kelly better watch it because if leading a team to a Rose Bowl victory can turn up the heat on your job, imagine what Dodd would think a national title would do to it.